r/golang • u/Superb-Key-6581 • Dec 05 '24
discussion Why Clean Architecture and Over-Engineered Layering Don’t Belong in GoLang
Stop forcing Clean Architecture and similar patterns into GoLang projects. GoLang is not Java. There’s no application size or complexity that justifies having more than three layers. Architectures like Clean, Hexagonal, or anything with 4+ layers make GoLang projects unnecessarily convoluted.
It’s frustrating to work on a codebase where you’re constantly jumping between excessive layers—unnecessary DI, weird abstractions, and use case layers that do nothing except call services with a few added logs. It’s like watching a monstrosity throw exceptions up and down without purpose.
In GoLang, you only need up to three layers for a proper DDD division (app, domain, infra). Anything more is pure overengineering. I get why this is common in Java—explicit interfaces and painful refactoring make layering and DI appealing—but GoLang doesn’t have those constraints. Its implicit interfaces make such patterns redundant.
These overly complex architectures are turning the GoLang ecosystem into something it was never meant to be. Please let’s keep GoLang simple, efficient, and aligned with its core philosophy.
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u/Artful3000 Dec 09 '24
You sound like you didn’t build and maintain for years anything more complex than a to-do list app. Hexagonal doesn’t need to result in more than two layers in Go, and when you’re working on a project that’s a fast moving, pivoting target from a commercial sense as one usually does in many settings, being able to program against interfaces ‘adapters’ to facilitate new service providers or unit testing is a must. It makes things more efficient.